ForenSix Opposition - Politics in the Soon To Be Former UK in Autumn 2020

Sadiq Khan better not lie down on this.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Anyway, here’s giant knitted poppy season.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Eky1lMlXUAYHLAF?format=jpg&name=900x900

I see FMHoP have done Kier Starmer's hair and poppy on Rob Brydon

Secretly in favour of the congestion charge zone expansion because a) fuck cars even mine b) it’s so transparently the Tories that they‘ll get the blame. But the rest is ... whatever the word is for a scandal in the time of lol nothing matters.

Khan will accept everything except the congestion zone which will be his "win"

/prediction

idk what leverage he has, other than the probability that the government doesn’t actually want to be directly responsible for TfL.

If we want London to be anything other than clogged up with traffic, some sort of congestion charge will be necessary IMO, but do it in the wrong way and you will wind up really hammering the people who can least afford it, set up perverse incentives (already driven the kids to school today? Already paid the charge, might as well get your money’s worth and do the rest of the day’s travel in the car) AND have a massive increase in surveillance cameras into the bargain.

From what I can see the proposed congestion charge zone encapsulates huge swathes of some of the poorest areas of the capital, mostly Labour seats as well. More to the point, for the foreseeable future, who in their right mind would get on public transport when they could get in the car?

Khan is also an easy target for the government for all the obvious reasons and they'd calculated they can pick a fight with him without any real downside, especially as he is almost certain to win next year regardless. IDK, we all know what's happening here, again.

Iirc ownership is already heavily skewed to older white people earning >£50k so in my dreams there’s a shared service effect which sees it lead to public transport improvement in the outer areas to the net benefit of poorer families. Obviously it would play out more like Tim says with richer people driving more, not less.

Who hasn’t this government picked a fight with yet? It will be pensioners any minute. They remind me of that Simpsons ep where Homer makes everything into the threat of a duel.

Rashford and others rightly rinsing Baker (who'd blocked anyone-can-reply).

You have 3.4M followers Marcus, to my 96K. The power is yours here.

Everyone knows feeding hungry children is a top priority. I'd like to see UC boosted.

But if the economy and currency collapse, the poor will be devastated.

Alleging a blind eye is just wrong.

— Steve Baker MP (@SteveBakerHW) October 21, 2020

Saving Secret Cinema cost us £977,004. But children need to starve to prevent quantitative easing. https://t.co/jDGX2viScG

— Dr Xand van Tulleken 🏳️‍🌈 (@xandvt) October 21, 2020

I know it's low level in the grand scheme of things but fuck knows how secret cinema got that much money.

Ooooh!! On that Andy Burnham now-viral meme in which he found out Greater Manchester funding on live TV.

Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick says:

“He didn’t”

“I phoned him and told him”

At 2pm he says. 😬

— Sophia Sleigh (@SophiaSleigh) October 21, 2020

Ignoring the "what a lark this politics game is" tone, somebody is lying about yesterday. Given the time this took to come out (and who they chose to tell it) suspect it's Tories trying to cover the whole thing in mud.

Political theatre or otherwise I doubt that four-hour difference is going to offset the missing £40m or so in the minds of most people in Greater Manchester.

Tory with a cravat on NN last night explaining that the money doesn't matter, it's about saving lives why can't the people of Manchester see that

I bet Burnham regrets sticking up for his "nice lad" tory pal jenrick on Any Questions a couple months back when he should have been sacked, and as a member of the opposition he should have been calling for his head. It didn't make him seem classy or rising above politics, it just made him look like a typical gutless pol, all in the same club together - covering each other's backs when they caught out red-handed committing grand-scale corruption.

lol Andrew "Keep Havering White" Rosindell

Trade envoy isn't a government job, and includes at least one Labour MP. Not commenting on the rights or wrongs of @AndrewRosindell vote last night, but this doesn't look like a good move. pic.twitter.com/rhdP2xxRSg

— David Henig (@DavidHenigUK) October 21, 2020

idk what the problem with sacking him is, tbh. He was presumably only a trade envoy at the ERG's behest.

Have never known a government Labour or Conservative so contemptuous of their own backbench MPs.

— David Henig (@DavidHenigUK) October 21, 2020

Irrespective of whether this is correct, has he seen who those backbenchers are?

I know it's low level in the grand scheme of things but fuck knows how secret cinema got that much money.

questions are being raised locally over a pub venue in St Leonard's that was opened last year by someone from London with music biz connections getting £237k while established venues are getting a couple of grand or nothing at all.

I've been to a few gigs at the new pub and it's an OK place, although definitely v pricey for St Leonard's, but something's not right there.

The Fountain?

no, The Piper

(the Fountain isn't in St Leonard's, unless you mean the Marina Fountain, dunno if they got anything though)

I'm assuming the people responsible for dividing up the money were overworked and understaffed, perhaps with little in-depth knowledge of the sector, and susceptible to a glossy presentation or outright misinformation, especially as there was a pot of money that had to go out quickly. Probably a big slice of old-fashioned cronyism as well.

Your periodic reminder that the government is currently able to borrow at negative interest rates. Of course, Steve knows this, he just can't wait for another excuse to kill poor people. https://t.co/2pJ44qNVQg pic.twitter.com/XaYpy4ju5i

— It's real 🍊 🍊 🍊 (@StefGotBooted) October 21, 2020

great days

Are people really discussing Boris Johnson as possible candidate for PM? When I lived in London he was known as the gaffe man!

— Jacinda Ardern (@jacindaardern) August 13, 2012

little in-depth knowledge of the sector, and susceptible to a glossy presentation or outright misinformation,

This is the general assumption from people i've spoken to in the sector. ACE has no real experience of 'nightlife'. The other factor is that the money could have been given to local organisations, like the Mayor's office, with a closer link to the sector but that would have complicated the message of centralised government generosity towards the arts.

It also would have entailed giving at least some of the decision-making power to Amy Lamé and I'm not sure that's much better.

I'm reliably informed that she's unfairly maligned!

I don't know anyone involved in London nightlife who has anything good to say about her at all, although that might be a product of giving a prominent individual a grandiose title with little to no real power.

It's partly that, partly her remit not being 'nightlife' as such, but everything that happens in London at night like transport, healthcare for shift workers, etc.

> Khan is also an easy target for the government for all the obvious reasons and they'd calculated they can pick a fight with him without any real downside

coincidently in the post today i had shaun bailey, crime-fighting youth worker, and candidate for london mayor, telling me sadiq had personally closed all the police stations and taken 8500 police off the streets.

his 9 point plan is 1-7 crime, 8 youth services, 9 emergency budget to combat crime

#drilly4mayor

I know people who have little good to say about her based on her activities pre Nightlife overlord

Comes across as a complete chancer and I always hated duckie

I published her in an anthology I did when she was still working shifts at First Out and had just started Duckie, which I’ve still never been to! She was also on the books of the Ugly Agency for appearing as a ‘big girl’ in adverts where required. I liked her a lot back then, but having given her some really good opportunities in feminist or feminist-adjacent projects I ran, I can say that since becoming a citizen and realising she can therefore Do Politics, she has seemed in a particular hurry to make friends more useful than me, plus anyone who turns their FB page with all their real friends into a ‘public figure’ page can’t really read the room.

"Did the honorable lady just call me scum?"

Conservative MP Chris Clarkson clashes with Labour's Angela Rayner as he accuses the opposition of "opportunism" over Covid restrictionshttps://t.co/TdtTBgBeWn pic.twitter.com/aP9JRXKVZ9

— BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) October 21, 2020

keep it forensic, Angela.

i believe him, he's probably heard the word a lot

I don't think even the most ardent Conservative supporters would have expected this after the last few days 😮 https://t.co/KO8dxDAmc3

— Election Maps UK (@ElectionMapsUK) October 21, 2020

take it easy Kieth, you're killing 'em

weird that the nation doesn't seem to be uniting behind an characterless opposition leader who offers them nothing and has no discernable ideas or ideology

pure speculation but i feel like a Labour Party that had kept some of the economic agenda and attitude from the Corbyn years and was attacking the government on their failures and demanding more action on protecting jobs and lives would be doing better than this shower of shit

meanwhile, i see that prof john edmunds has told the science and health select committee that there's no way we're getting out of this wave of the rona without tens of thousands of deaths, which seems like the kind of thing that a government should probably be held to account for unless lol nothing matters

those Tory numbers don't look drastically different to what you'd expect from the perma-Tories plus maybe a bit of "support the government during a national crisis" thing. the failure is all Labour's

i'm vaguely surprised that support for labour is as high as it is tbh

savantacom res might be an outlier, but I bet Keith will be sweating on those other polls dropping over the next few days. He might need to start thinking about his leadership style, or just resign and then take up some nice hobbies like tombstoning or drunken skiing

hell of an achievement to lose three points of support while facing off against the most patently incompetent government the uk has had in living memory, which is quite an achievement in itself considering the last decade of tory rule

Meanwhile in the House of Lords

Sadly inevitable vote result with Labour abstention

Amendment for rights of UK citizens to live with EU spouses/partners and children in own country lost 168-254.

— Natalie Bennett (@natalieben) October 21, 2020

wt actual f?

They heard December’s message from the electorate loud and clear, I guess. I keep thinking about that twitter thread about the problem with Corbyn being that he valued the lives of people who weren’t white and/or British, and it keeps feeling truer all the time.

there's no other reason to abstain is there?